Advertisers are always looking for new and better, i.e. more targeted methods, to advertise their products. For example, this search has lead to the proliferation of advertising on the Internet. It is a new advertising medium, and it offers a more targeted approach, in which search engines can present advertisements related to a given search and retailers can present advertisements related to previous purchases.
As this proliferation of advertisements continues, any one advertisement tends to be lost in the clutter. Moreover, individuals tend to ignore the advertisements or purchase software to block “pop-up” advertisements.
There are a number of examples in the prior art of methods for delivering advertisements to cell phones and other wireless devices. However, these methods suffer from a number of drawbacks. For example, some systems and methods require the user, or the user's device, to take action to receive an advertisement; do not provide any compensation to the user for listening to the advertisement; and do not provide targeted advertisements. In other methods the advertisements are delivered without a user taking action but in which no compensation is paid to the user for listening to the advertisement. In another method, the advertisements are delivered without the user taking any action and in which incentive is provided to the user to listen to the advertisement in the form of credits toward the cost of the network service based on the number of advertisements played. However, no targeted advertisements are provided.